Toleration

When we tolerate something we deliberately refrain from negating that thing. More abstractly, toleration can be understood as a political practice aiming at neutrality, objectivity, or fairness on the part of political agents. These ideas are related in that the goal of political neutrality is deliberate restraint of the power that political authorities have to negate the life activities of citizens and subjects. Related to toleration is the virtue of tolerance, which can be defined as a tendency toward toleration. Toleration is usually grounded upon an assumption about the importance of the autonomy of individuals. This assumption and the idea of toleration are central ideas in modern liberal theory and practice. The present article will discuss toleration as found in the works of John Locke, Baruch de Spinoza, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, John Rawls and other contemporary philosophers.